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To: LeoWindhorse

If I recall correctly, some of the SEALs were cremated before the families even got a chance to make a decision as to what to do with their son’s remains.


19 posted on 08/06/2015 6:03:05 AM PDT by Ghost of SVR4 (So many are so hopelessly dependent on the government that they will fight to protect it.)
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To: Ghost of SVR4
"If I recall correctly, some of the SEALs were cremated before the families even got a chance to make a decision as to what to do with their son’s remains.

Not long after this SEAL Team 6 incident, I attended a funeral at Arlington for six members of a Special Forces Recon Team we lost in the A Shau Valley, Vietnam on April 17, 1969. The remains of those six soldiers (3 US Special Forces and 3 Vietnamese Special Forces) were buried in one casket, and after the ceremony when I voiced my disapproval of this one casket for six remains, the Funeral Director pointed down the line of tombstones and said, "Remember the Chinook crash that killed seventeen SEALS in Afghanistan the other day? The remains of all seventeen SEALS are in one casket right down there." He went on to explain that there are very few identifiable remains left to recover after a Chinook with a full load of fuel crashes and burns.

As for why the remains of my six comrades were in one casket, he explained that identifying remains by DNA is very expensive, so they only identified enough remains to ensure they had at least one bone from each American soldier and then they stopped, and this left them with a large bag of unidentified bones, so they just put them all in one casket and were done with it. There was no way of identifying the three Vietnamese Special Forces soldiers by DNA, so they just assumed the unidentifiable bones were Vietnamese.

At first, I thought that one casket for all six soldiers wasn't appropriate, but then, after thinking about it for a while, I came to understand that my six comrades had lain together on the side of a mountain for over forty years, and now they would be together for eternity in their casket in Arlington National Cemetery.

And yes, we now have three Vietnamese Special Forces Soldiers (Luc Luong Dac Biet) interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

26 posted on 08/06/2015 12:30:09 PM PDT by DJ Taylor (Once again our country is at war, and once again the Democrats have sided with our enemy.)
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